Friends, the Gone Autos film library is without bounds! (If, by “bounds”, you mean two columns of shelves stuffed full of orphan car films tucked away in the basement)

We got AMC stuff. We got Nash stuff. We got Oldsmobile stuff and Studebaker and Plymouth stuff! We even have a 1929 Graham-Paige film!

But our Packard library is teeny tiny. Just one official factory reel of 1953 Packard TV commercials.

I hate to keep this stuff in the moldy dark, so I hauled out the reel and digitized these spots. Here’s one of them for your viewing pleasure.

Rejoice as the monstrous Packard Cavalier turns effortlessly thanks to power steering! And how could you get that land yacht up a steep hill without Packard’s Ultramatic transmission? (Or a tow truck?) And you gotta appreciate how Packard’s power brakes keep the driver from plowing through a group of kids crossing the street. (Packard engineers sure thought of everything!)

I kid, but, of course, I would love to drive one of these three-pillared schooners. Since I can’t this commercial will have to do. Enjoy!

AMC's Rebel Machine is one of the most outrageous muscle cars from the classic muscle car era of the 1960s/70s.

They were rarely ever spotted on the street, because AMC only made 2,326 of them. And only 1,000 of those were finished in the iconic red/white/blue paint scheme.

And, except for a vintage salesman training filmstrip, no one ever saw AMC point a camera at this beast. Until now.

In this short segment that I’ve uploaded to YouTube, you’ll see 49 seconds of Rebel Machine footage shot by AMC.

It’s a small part of the 1970 AMC product introduction film. AMC produced a new one every year to promote the company’s lineup of cars to its dealers. (I have these films in whole or in part from 1969, 1970, 1971, 1973, and 1977. They’re so rare that I only have fragments of some of them, and I’m grateful for those celluloid shards.)

The 1970 film is a 35mm print that I bought off of eBay several years ago. Unfortunately, I only have the video portion of the film.

Back in the day, these films were often created as separate elements. There would be a video film print and another film print that would contain just the soundtrack. The duplicators would join them together to create 16mm copies for wider distribution. Perhaps somewhere out there (probably in a land fill) is the soundtrack that accompanies this film. Given a choice, I’m glad to have the video.

So what does this film tell us about AMC? I think it says that AMC was caught off guard by the tremendous success of the 1969 S/C Rambler. The company had planned for 1969 to be the Rambler’s swan song, and they wanted to go out with a ka-bang. They went out with 315 of them when they stuffed the AMX’s 390 V-8 into a Rambler Rogue and netted 315 hp.

They only planned to build 1,000 or so Scramblers, but demand was so great that they added another 500 to the production run (with a more restrained paint scheme). AMC had just produced one of the most in-your-face muscle cars of all time.

So if it works once, why not do it again? AMC probably didn’t want to make a special Hornet just yet. After all, they were introducing it as a bread-and-butter family car. Plus, they were going to introduce the Gremlin subcompact, so it’s likely they didn’t want to bog down the media with too many headlines. So they looked to the Rebel, their intermediate offering. (Nothing special going on with that car.)

Once again, they went off their meds and created another unmistakable red/white/blue exterior design. But this time, they were more intentional about promoting it. There was a print ad (like the Scrambler), a training filmstrip, and this segment from the product introduction film. That’s at least 66% more marketing than whatever they did for the Scrambler.

And let’s not even talk about what’s happening in this footage. I’m sure Homeland Security would have reserved a “suite” for this driver at the Guantanamo Hilton if they had been around back in 1970. You’ll see.

After all, what’s more American than doing donuts on a live airstrip with American Airlines planes taking off all around you while power shifting your red, white, and blue gas guzzler? Now THAT’S American Motors Country.

I have a LOT of orphan car films (Industrial films, commercials, home movies, scraps of this, bits of that). It’s all fairly rare stuff, but one of the more interesting segments comes from a home movie that I bought off of eBay several years ago.

Amidst shots of kids mugging for the camera and grannies running away from it, there’s this short segment (with titles) about a Hupmobile radiator test conducted in Spain by Francis Abadal, Hupmobile’s Spanish distributor.

I think it’s fascinating, because I know of no other films by or about Hupmobile that were shot during the time they were in business.

I don’t know when this film was shot. One fellow eBay bidder thinks that the car in the movie is a 1929 Model A with dual side mounts. I’m not a Hupmobile expert, so it sounds plausible to me.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your comments either on this blog or on the YouTube channel where I’ve uploaded the film.